Mulching mowers are known having multiple cutting blades suspended beneath the cutting deck. In some of these mowers, a plurality of cutting chambers are formed on the underside of the deck surrounding the blades. Shroud walls which are separate from the usual peripheral skirt on the deck extend downwardly over interior portions of the top wall of the deck to define the cutting chamber array. In a mulching mode of operation, the external shroud walls are generally unbroken to confine the circulation of the grass clippings to the interior of the cutting chambers. Thus, the grass clippings are eventually driven downwardly through the open bottom faces of the cutting chambers by the action of the cutting blades and various grass deflecting members, known as kickers, that are often positioned within the cutting chambers above the plane of rotation of the blades. One such multi-bladed mower of this general type is shown in U.S. Pat No. 5,133,176 to Baumann et al., which is assigned to the assignee of this invention.
The multi-bladed mower shown in the Baumann et al. patent is dedicated to mulching, i.e. the cutting chambers are always peripherally enclosed such that the only exit for the grass clippings is downwardly through and out of the open bottom faces of the cutting chambers. While the Baumann et al. structure is a very effective mulching mower, it is not able to discharge the grass clippings to the side of the mower deck for deposit on the grass or into a grass collection device such as a bag or hopper. To the extent that such a discharge/collection mode is desirable at times, the Baumann et al. mower does not satisfy this desire. Accordingly, a mower that is convertible between a mulching mode of operation and a discharge/collection mode of operation would have certain advantages.
The Toro Company of Minneapolis, Minn. has previously manufactured and sold a multi-bladed mower which can be converted from a mulching mode of operation to a discharge/collection mode of operation. Such a mower could be converted by removing the front half of the cutting chamber shroud extending from one side of the mower to the other so that the grass clippings would no longer be confined to the cutting chambers, but could flow through the cutting chambers in a grass discharge path out through a side discharge outlet. The removable front half of the shroud was mostly bolted into place by a plurality of downwardly or inwardly extending bolts that were secured by nuts located beneath the underside of the deck.
While this mower could be converted to a discharge/collection mode of operation, it was difficult and time consuming to do so. The walls defining the removable shroud half were sufficiently thick or deep that the shroud half could not simply be loosened and dropped down onto the ground. Even with the deck in its highest position and with the removable shroud half sitting on the ground after being loosened, the shroud half still extended above the lower lip or edge of the skirt of the cutting deck. Thus, the peripheral skirt of the cutting deck prevented one from simply pulling the shroud half out from beneath the skirt even with a maximum elevation of the deck.
Thus, in this prior art mower, the user had to lift or jack the entire mower up, including the traction unit to which the cutting deck was attached, to gain additional clearance between the underside of the deck and the ground. Then, the user would have to crawl or reach beneath the deck to loosen all of the securing nuts located below the top wall of the deck. After such nuts were loosened and with sufficient clearance having been gained by jacking the mower up, the removable shroud half would then fall down onto the ground. The user could then slide or pull the shroud half outwardly beneath the raised skirt on the deck. The need to jack the deck up, and the need to crawl or reach beneath the deck to unscrew or unbolt the removable shroud half, made this conversion procedure difficult and time consuming. As a practical matter, this difficulty often deterred the user from making the conversion in the first place--the mower was often simply left in its mulching mode even if conversion to the discharge/collection mode was otherwise desirable.
An alternative method of converting the prior art mower to its discharge/collection mode was to remove the cutting deck from the traction unit prior to removal of the removable shroud half. This avoided having to lift or jack the entire mower up as only the cutting deck would have to be raised sufficiently to allow the removable shroud half to be removed. However, the need to remove the cutting deck from the traction unit, and the subsequent need to replace it on the traction unit after the conversion process is finished, was itself time-consuming. Accordingly, this alternative conversion method was not much better than simply jacking the entire mower up in terms of difficulty or the time required to do the work.